Vote Yes Yes in the national Ballot

The ballot of PCS members taking place between 8th February and 4th March is vital for the living standards of our members.

A large YES vote on a healthy turn-out would allow us to begin to redress the balance in the UK economy and secure a fair reward for the hard work civil and public servants continue to provide. 

Throughout the next few weeks we can expect the legitimacy of our demands for a pay increase – 5% of £1,200, whichever is greater – to be challenged. This newsletter is intended to deal with those challenges. 

We’re not “all in this together”! 

According to the Sunday Times Rich List the one thousand wealthiest individuals in the UK increased their wealth by £156bn or 60% in three years between 2009 and 2012. Over the same period, as a result of the public sector pay-freeze and 1% cap, your pay has lost between 16% and 25% of its value in real terms.

Fig 1 

Over the last thirty years, the highest earners have seen a disproportion-ate increase in their pay compared to average (median) and low paid workers, as this graph from the TUC demonstrates. 


Divide and rule – the oldest trick in the book 

A lot of rhetoric from our opponents seeks to pit the interests of public sector workers against private sector workers and, more recently, unemployed workers by establishing an arbitrary “1%” as the benchmark for annual uprating. The fact is, while the super rich continue to line their pockets the rest of us are all suffering. In fact, since the late 1970s when Thatcher’s attacks on the unions gathered pace the share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP – the nation’s “wealth”) paid as wages has fallen dramatically to just under 55%. 


Fig 2: UK wage share as proportion of GDP 




The “missing” 45% is largely profit and helps explain the vast sums accumulated by the people featured in the Rich List mentioned above. 


What about the workers? 

If the power of the unions had not been undermined over three decades and collective bargaining coverage in the whole UK labour market not fallen from 64% to 31% over the same period, average earnings today would likely be over £33,000 per year rather than just under £26,000 per year. 

Fig 3 



When you consider that average earnings usually equate roughly to the EO (or equivalent) scale maxima, it soon becomes clear to what extent workers, including among our membership, have lost out. Neither is this just a UK phenomenon; similar patterns are evident in most advanced industrialised countries. 

Conclusion 

Calls from leading economists on George Osborne to ditch a policy of austerity are growing and it is widely recognised that cuts in spending power are the cause of the double (soon to be triple) dip recession rather than the cure. As we have demonstrated in this newsletter, our demands for a decent pay rise are not just legitimate but necessary. 

VOTE YES/YES